Next PageNumber 08 08-- Overlord II -- 2009 Triumph Studios / Codemasters It may very well be the cheesiest sex scene in a video game, b..

Number 09

09 -- Mass Effect -- 2007 BioWare /Microsoft Game Studios
Proof that Liara T'Soni sleeps around -- at least in this case of the original title that established the Mass Effect series!

The sex scene embedded above is similar to the one that caused Fox News to run a special report entitled "SE*XBOX?" that suggested that the newest game from BioWare and Microsoft for its Xbox 360 Games Console represented a clear and present danger to the morals of teenaged boys all over the world -- and they even had expert opinions to back their claims up... In a world before Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post we were forced to rely upon the services of Fox News and similar networks for reporting on the truly important stories effecting all of us, but thanks to the Internet the situation is getting better.

While the Fox News reporter stopped short of actually declaring the scene in the video above to be outright pornography, they let their expert talking head suggest that it was certainly that and more -- that exposing teenaged boys (the age mentioned was 13) was damaging and harmful to them, implying that it could even have lasting and permanent effects upon any teenager who witnessed it. The talking head -- a female psychiatrist who, like the reporter and host admitted that she had not actually played the game in order to pass judgement upon it -- goes on to assert that the sex scene can only result in the boys objectifying women as sexual objects, which by implication would do permanent damage to their emotional growth.

The story was carried nationwide on the Fox News Network and was quickly picked up by other networks, newspapers, and radio, with many of those outlets repeating the exaggerations that were originally made by the experts Fox invited to participate in report. While Mass Effect was not the first video game to be declared a danger to kids, it was one of the first to be singled out for what was realistically only a tiny fraction of its contents -- slightly less than two minutes of art-film-style sex as opposed to its nearly 30 hours of graphic alien-slaying violence... Which is a refreshing change of pace for the news media and right-wing moral guardians, who usually blame video game violence for all of the ills in the world where teenagers are concerned.

After gaming experts who actually had played the game began to point out that the allegations made via the Fox Network and by other outlets were either outright false or vastly exaggerated -- there was no full-frontal nudity, there were no close-up shots of genitalia and penetration, the sex scene in the game was only just under 2-minutes long, and not the hours of sex that was implied in later reports, and the sex being depicted was consensual and not forced -- coverage of the issue disappeared seemingly overnight, but not before organizations like the Cybercast News Service, a conservative web-based news site, claimed in a report published as legitimate news that Mass Effect contained "explicitly graphic sexual intercourse."

Popular conservative blogger Kevin McCullough joined in the rush to judge, claiming publicly that Mass Effect was specifically targeted at young boy gamers and that it allowed players ". . . to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived."

"One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to 'engage' and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game 'persons' hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of," McCullough claimed, adding that ". . . because of the digital chip age in which we live 'Mass Effect' can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes."

The fact that none of that is true did not stop either Fox, the Cybercast News Service, or McCullough to press the allegations, which were quickly picked up by conservative Christian and other religious organizations who accepted the claims as fact and ran with them. Bear in mind that all of this vitriol and doomsday allegations springs from the fifty-second-long video clip embedded above?

(watch it again to refresh your memory of its contents)

Gay and lesbian magazines and websites on the other hand heralded the inclusion of the option for a lesbian sexual relationship (possible when the player chooses to play the game as a female Commander Shepard) as a step in the right direction, but criticized publisher BioWare for failing to include male-and-male relationships, sexual or otherwise.

All that we can say is that the sex scene in Mass Effect made a definite impression on the gamers from our voting pool (all of whom are over 18) who voted it the 9th best video game sex scene ever...

First PageWith all the controversy and protest over the disappointing ending of Mass Effect 3 mostly behind us, now that BioWare appears to have cap..